Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Ok so I will be out of town for the next few days and I am not sure if I will get a chance to blog while I am away. I know there are like maybe three people who ever look at this thing, but I wanted to put it out there in case someone stumbles onto this blog and thinks wow he is a genius why has he not written in a while. Here is something to entertain you while I am away, an oldie but goodie from Sesame Street.

Monday, June 25, 2007

I was very excited to find the farmers market in the area that I just moved to. This relates back to a post I made earlier about the evils of the corporate farming system. It also relates to a post that was made by the Cunning Runt about what is now put into our milk by Monsanto. The farmers market gives me the opportunity to find milk, bread, eggs and especially vegetables and fruits that are locally grown and hence support the local farmers. I also think that the service and relationships that can be gained in regularly going to farmer's markets are much more personal and stronger than those that are attained by going to the local megamart. I can also fine local wines which although I am not a huge wine drinker, when I do drink wine I prefer to know that the grapes were grown locally and the processing was done locally as well. Now all I have to do is find a local brewery and I will be all set.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Ok so I wanted to try something. I will post random things from YouTube on Fridays that I find either funny or interesting or hell just nostalgic.

Here is the first one. See Mom you should play with your food and sometimes you can even make great music. I do have to say that I stole this from two other bloggers who I really like, The Cunning Runt and Phydeaux.

And this other YouTube gem is a combination of probably my two favorite musicals (at least currently)

Thursday, June 21, 2007

I saw Fast Food Nation recently and wow. I already don't eat beef, but if I did I would probably stop after that movie. After the movie I was checking out the special features and there are these neat little short films called the Meatrix where they do more in discussing the myths behind the production of beef, milk and eggs in the American farm system. It shows how the animals are crowded together in small areas and are basically drugged up to keep them submissive and also so that they will produce the amount of meat or milk that is needed. There really are very few family run farms anymore, now they are corporate farms. It really is a sad state of affairs. It makes me think about what happens to these farmers who have had family farms for generations and now they are bought out and turned into these cookie cutter, mass producing farm machines. This video by John Mellencamp shows in 1985 the demise of the family farms and what it is doing to the heartland.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

So I check out Shakesville quiet often, especially now that I am on this little vacation (which will end soon sadly), and there have been a lot of posts about body acceptance recently. These are all interesting to me as I think about the message that we send out constantly to the women and men in our society. Also, because I work with young children I think about what messages we send to them in commercials and toys they are supposed to play with (I could go into gender roles and how we force that upon children but that is another post). I thought about how the dolls that we give to little girls are all these skinny things that do not reflect an accurate body image. They are all Barbies who have the perfect hourglass figure, are blond and have blue eyes. There are an increasing number of dolls that are supposed to cater to children who are not white, so the skin color is now darker, but... the figure is still the same like this one or this one. What the fuck is going on, hell for me to even find these dolls on the Toys R Us website I had to look in the Ethnic dolls section. Why can't dolls all be placed in the same section? Back to my original point which is that we do not portray a range of body sizes for little girls so they grow up thinking they have to always be skinny. As has been posted at other places, your body shape is as much if not more a product of your genes than your diet or exercise and yet our children are taught that if they are not skinny than they are not valuable.

We can make dolls with a variety of skin shades and colors and yet they all have the same body shape, what the hell is this? That makes no sense. Women do not all look the same and not all guys are looking for the same body shape like this ad implies.

In case you can't read it, the ad says: Forget about it. Men’s preference will never change. Fit Light Yogurt.

What a load of shit. I find this women very sexy and damn the yogurt companies for saying otherwise.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

I heard about this at my part time job a the local Y. Here was a teenager we all knew because he was always at the Y and he was shot last night. As you can see from this story, the details are still sketchy. All that seems to be known is that he snuck out sometime after 11 PM and was taken to the hospital around 3 AM with a gunshot wound. It was one of those times where it seemed all of the staff who came in asked, "Have you heard about Preston?" I even had a member or two who asked if we knew anymore about what had happened because their kids played basketball with Preston at the Y. It is so sad and yet again confirms my strong belief in gun control. It just scares me. He seemed like such a good kid and yet he was shot late at night when he was supposed to be at home.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

I was watching BBC America tonight and saw an ad for this movie and I thought what if the same kind of idea was done here. We talk so much about our freedom of speech, but a movie like this would never be made about Bush's war in Iraq. We would never actually indict him, even on TV, for getting us into a war that has killed countless number of soldiers and civilians. Do we really have freedom of speech or have we devolved to a point at which money and ratings regulate our every move in the media?

I have noticed my dog can sleep a lot. I am not sure he does much else. I was not home all day, but he was active for bit when I got home after work and then later after I had to run out on errands. But those were like short periods of time maybe 20 minutes or so each time. So if I add up all the time he was awake and active it is like probably 2 hours at most everyday. I guess I shouldn't count the time he is awake, but not running around. Anyway, I am not complaining just noting he sleeps a lot.

Yeah I know it is an ass shot, so probably not the best, but when I tried to move to get a better shot so did he, he was not as asleep as I thought.